The trading journal: fields that matter

What to actually write down for every trade

A trading journal isn't a diary. It's a structured log built so future-you can audit past-you and figure out what's working. If you log too little, you can't learn from it. If you log too much, you'll stop logging. The art is picking fields that earn their space.

The minimum useful set. Entry price. Exit price. Position size. Risk in dollars and in R. R outcome (the result expressed as +2R, -1R, etc). Setup name (the named pattern you took — like 'pullback to 20 EMA' or 'breakout from range'). Entry timestamp and exit timestamp. A before-screenshot taken at the moment you placed the trade. An after-screenshot taken when you closed. One sentence on emotion when entering. One sentence on what you'd do differently. That's it. Ten fields. Two minutes per trade.

Why each field earns its space. Entry, exit, size, and R quantify the trade. Setup name lets you group trades by pattern, so you can see that your pullbacks are winning at 60% while your breakouts are losing at 40% — without that tag, the data is mush. Timestamps let you spot session bias (you trade better in London hours than New York hours, for example). Screenshots are the irreplaceable forensic record. Emotion notes flag the trades you took on tilt versus the ones you took clean. The lessons line is what your future self will read on the weekly review.

Tools. You can use a spreadsheet, a Notion database, or a dedicated journal app. None is magic — what matters is that you actually fill it out. Start with a spreadsheet, because friction is the enemy. Ten columns, one row per trade. Drop the before and after screenshots in a dated folder named by trade ID. After 100 trades, you'll have enough data to filter by setup, by time of day, by emotion tag. That filtering is where the actual learning happens.

The non-negotiable rule: log the trade before you take the next one. Not 'at the end of the day.' Not 'tomorrow.' Before. Because the only way the emotion field is honest is if you write it while it's still in your body. Five minutes after the trade closes, you've already rationalized whatever you felt. Now the data is contaminated.

Recap: ten fields, two minutes per trade, logged before the next entry. Setup tag and screenshots are the load-bearing pieces. Skip them and the journal won't teach you anything.